Reforged
by RainButterfly
Summary: "This is my body. It was built to kill you. Not to please you, not to satiate you. To kill you." Mikasa weighs the pros and cons of feeling like a human being, and feeling desire for another person. Bertolt should have weighed them earlier. (Maybe some accidental discrepancies with canon, I haven't read AoT in a while...)


Mikasa's fingers on his skin always felt cold at first, cold and slightly clammy and shivering as they slid along his shoulders, his neck. Every time they met up in the forgotten pantry under the dining hall, or a spare bedroom that no one had used in at least a century, or even the barracks one day when the rest of the 104th division were off drinking the night away and they'd gotten brave, she was unsure of herself.

On the training field or in battle, Mikasa was a machine. She let her instincts take over; she never second-guessed herself. With a boy, though, she seemed to overthink her every move, every touch and kiss and whispered word, as though she were approaching lovemaking with the analytics of advanced military strategy.

Bertolt, on the other hand, stumbled through everything in front of her. He was as timid with a woman as he was with the rest of the trainees, and even less composed. He'd shivered the first time she touched him like _that, _not pinning him to the ground during practice or handing a weapon to him. Touching him with _desire, _with _tenderness, _even…

He would have liked to say that they got better with time, that eventually their bodies became accustomed to each other. But every time she shot him a look, or told him where and when she wanted to see him later that night, they always approached this time like it was the first and last time together. Bertolt knew that it had to be this way, taking every night as it came. He didn't want to get attached to her, or let her down.

He didn't know why he kept coming back, though. Mikasa only had eyes for Eren, and that was something they both knew, though they never discussed it. Afterwards, she'd crawl under his arm and peer into his eyes, as if trying to gauge him. Her touch, by then, would feel warm, gentle, _good._ He hated himself for craving it. Sometimes they would talk about how unreasonable the last training instructor had been, or when Sasha was going to discover them together while raiding all the nearby food pantries. Bertolt tried to make her smile, make her laugh. The fact that she responded to his corny, awkward attempts at humor was an act of graciousness, or perhaps just desperation, he really couldn't tell. He tried to shut his mind off those nights, and just see the beautiful woman lying next to him. He always let her lead, and he always listened. Sometimes Mikasa would be more serious. She'd tell him about how much she worried for Armin, how she was afraid of not being able to protect her friends (she always used the term vaguely, never mentioning Eren by name).

"It just means that you love them," Bertolt had said the first time she brought it up. "That's amazing- when this world is so cruel." He almost bit back his words. He'd never intended to speak so impulsively, so genuinely, but he couldn't help it. She made him feel kind, and that was sick and twisted given who he really was to her.

Mikasa had just smiled. His chest warmed and bloomed and twisted and hurt. "That's all the more reason to love them, Bertolt."

She had assumed then that he agreed. He supposed he did, just not in the way that she wanted him to.

Bertolt had always figured that she just needed a release, or maybe to feel desirable- a normal girl, not the mass weapon that she was treated as by the veterans and higher ups.

Or maybe that was him. He could relate to the feeling. Perhaps he was just projecting his own needs onto her, because he felt the best when he was holding her in his arms, when his thoughts were too clouded with need and want to be able to remember that he was her enemy, or even that he had…

No. No, never think that. Never go there.

He dreaded the night when she would ask him about himself, or his childhood. What would he say? If he ever told her about his parents, both long dead, she would surely try to relate. She would tell him about Carla, about how she'd lost both of her families so long ago. She'd expect sympathy that he would be a coward to not give, and worse, a hypocrite, to give.

The night that she did ask him that question, cupping his face and gazing up at him through long lashes, Bertolt tensed up so quickly that she pulled back, startled, and almost fell off of the crate, carefully laden with several blankets and a spare pillow, that they were curled up on.

Thankfully, both of their reflexes remained intact. He reached out to catch her just as she'd steadied herself, and they ended up crashing into each other again. He fell back onto the sheets, taking Mikasa with him.

"S-Sorry, Mikasa- I'm so sorry, I-" he hesitated, but she shook her head.

"It's alright. I should have known." She looked down, clearly dejected. "No one coming into the Trainee Corps has a happy story. I don't. Neither do my friends."

"It's not you," he whispered. "It was never you."

His voice had grown tight and hoarse, constricted with guilt and grief and even the beginnings of something else, something that he knew he could never feel for her. Mikasa was silent for a long moment, and Bertolt wondered if she was looking at him. He did not attempt to meet her gaze, instead looking down at his own clasped hands.

There was so much feeling in those words, more than she knew. More, he prayed to whatever gods had abandoned them, than she would ever know. Please, let her never know.

"Thank you." Mikasa's voice was warm, delicate. Bertolt wondered for a moment how many others could have seen her so vulnerable. How in the name of anything had he won her trust so easily? How much of a liar was he, without even trying nowadays?

"Mikasa…" he began, but trailed off. The first time he had come to Paradis, all those years ago, he had had no qualms about anything. The Eldians he trampled underfoot had been nameless, faceless abominations to him. He would never have dreamed of giving his body and mind to one so completely. He would never have dreamed that he'd hold one in his arms late at night and wish that he could surrender to her and her dreams just like that…

"The reason I asked you to...with me," Mikasa said, cupping his face in her hands again and gently but firmly raising his chin up, so he had to look her in the eyes, "was because I knew that you felt like me. That you couldn't show it. If I...with you, I mean, you'd never tell anyone. You're not cocky like Jean or obsessed with posturing… You'd take me seriously. You would do anything for Reiner, or Annie. Just like I'd do anything for Armin or..."

"Mika…I…"

I'm the one who caused you pain, he wanted to say. You and Eren, both of you. You're here, risking your lives for the country of devils, not caring if you die or not, because I destroyed your last semblance of hope. And I never felt any remorse, not until I _met _you.

Strangle me. Break my neck, beat me black and blue if that's what it takes to make you feel better. Mikasa, I never wanted to…

The words are almost out of his mouth, Marley be damned, when he remembers that Annie's father's birthday was this week, and she hadn't been able to even place in the top five during hand-to-hand combat practice. He sees Reiner up in his room, confused and disoriented as he gets more and more frequently nowadays, alone.

He sees Marcel disappearing into the jaws of a Titan. And then he sees Mikasa staring up at him intently. You'd do anything for them, she'd said, and she'd meant it as a compliment.

"It's so hard," he breathed, collapsing against her.

"I know," she whispered into his ear. She massaged his ears and neck, and he melted against her strong, solid frame. He said another silent prayer, that when she died, it would be quick and painless. That she'd go to an eternal paradise, if there even was one. That she'd never have to regret becoming one with him night after night for months, when they both needed to be weak, to feel human, even though he figured that he barely qualified anymore.

When he drifted off into sleep, his dreams did not grant him respite. He saw himself devouring a beautiful woman while Eren screamed bloody murder. He saw Mikasa with her hands around his neck, no longer the gentle, fumbling lover that he'd come to know, but a hateful killing machine. He willed himself awake when he realized he was dreaming. One day though, he would not be able to wake himself up from that nightmare to find Mikasa snoring softly onto his chest. He wouldn't be able to stroke her hair and remind himself that she was there, that she was okay, that she liked him, even though he shouldn't want any of those things.

"It was never, ever, ever you," he repeats softly on the final night, before they're set to graduate, and he carries her (she's a surprisingly heavy sleeper, perhaps her one weakness) off to her own bed. If he gets caught and scolded by Reiner or Annie, he deserves it. No- he _welcomes _it. He needs to come back down to the ground. He needs to stop living this dream.

The girls' barracks are dark and silent. Bertolt lays Mikasa down gently, then turns around and surveys the room. Annie's in her bunk, asleep. When Mikasa awakens, she'll wonder why he took the care to bring her back to the barracks himself, instead of simply waking her up to find her own way back as he usually does (between the two of them, he always awakens, sweating and slightly shaken, first). It may end up being the first of many questions, but he wants to show her that he cares. That she wasn't nothing to him, that he was willing to risk himself for her, albeit in this pathetic, inadequate way.

"Goodnight, Mikasa," he whispers softly before stepping out of the barracks.

Mikasa can only remember the feeling of being held and cradled, like she was a child again, feeling her body swaying listlessly in the air...or was it waves? The specifics of her dream never quite come back to her.

"It was never you." She remembers his voice enveloping her, she remembers smiling to herself and going back to dozing. She remembers waking in the morning in her own bed, and realizing he must have carried her himself, the idiot. At the time, her only concern was that he was catching feelings, and she wouldn't know what to do about that. What would things be like after the Trainee Corps? She didn't even consider her own feelings at the time, or how they'd affect her later on.

She touches her fingers lightly to her forehead and wonders if what he was saying to her, or had said to her, had found its way into her dreams. She smiles at the thought in spite of herself, feeling giddy for a moment, warm, like a teenage girl. One of the only times she feels like her body belongs to her, not the to Trainee Corps. Not to the Titans.

But when she finds out, she hates her body even more. When he turns on her, turns on them, hurts the one person she'd swore she would protect no matter what, she seethes and grits her teeth and goes out into the woods and cuts, punches, or kicks everything she can see. Debris falls all around her, birds scatter in the sky. Miles away, civilians wonder what sort of natural disaster is occurring under the foliage.

_This is who I am, _she thinks, _this is my body. It was built to kill you. Not to please you, not to satiate you. To __**kill**__ you._

She had been a meek little girl once, and her body had almost been taken from her, without her consent, without her doing a thing about it. But since then, she'd rebuilt it. Remade herself, and that was her choice, she tells herself now. Her choice. No one else's.

But she'd handed that same body over to _him_\- to _it, _the Colossal Titan, like a little slut. Not like the one-woman army that could do the job of a hundred men. She'd been seduced, or she'd seduced- she's not sure which is which, but she is sure that she'd let herself be used by the very thing she had sworn to destroy.

_It was never you. _Of course, she thinks. It was never _me._ _I_ was inconsequential to you. _I _let myself go around you, and _I _paid the price. Not you.

Her head buzzes with possibilities. Did he do it so she'd go soft on him, not be able to land a killing blow? Was he trying to keep her from noticing what he was doing, what Reiner and Annie were doing? Had he just been using her like the men when she was a child had wanted to?

Had he ever cared? Her thoughts go back to waking up in the barracks, that last night… He'd known then, hadn't he? That this would be the very last time. He hadn't caught feelings, didn't want to pursue a relationship with her. It had been the opposite.

But she banishes the thought from her mind. Whether or not Bertolt Hoover ever thought he felt anything for Mikasa Ackerman, he was wrong. And she had no use for sentiment now.

She would do as she was trained to do. Subdue the enemy. Take out any Titan who opposed her. Protect Eren.

She emerges from the forest rebuilt and reforged once more. This body is deadly, this body is nothing but a machine now. It never craved a man's touch, nor has it shivered and arched into that touch it so desired. It has never held a man close. It has certainly never given itself to a Titan it was built to kill.

"It was never you," she mutters to herself, clenching her fists and striding back to the barracks. "This whole time, it was...never _you._"

Mikasa Ackerman has never touched Bertolt Hoover. And if she ever touches him now, it will be to slice his throat open.


End file.
